A couple who paid £3.5 million for a run-down 1950s beach house on the
exclusive Sandbanks peninsula in Dorset have been refused permission to tear
it down and rebuild it.

At £1,725 per sq ft, the price paid by Stephen and Lucie Allen for the
two-storey house was a record for the strip of land at the mouth of Poole
Harbour, which is the most expensive place to buy a home in Britain outside
Central London.

The couple’s plans for a modern four-storey, five-bedroom house with swimming
pool, gym and three-car garage were thrown out by Poole council after
objections